It's time to throw a weird red cloth over my face, suspend myself in the air, and get this season started right...
The Cell (2000)
UHD | Director's Cut
A psychologist uses a special apparatus to enter the minds of children to help them, but one day the FBI leverages her help to enter the mind of a comatose serial killer.
Sometimes, one can't help but to hold a morbid curiosity over what must go in a serial killer's head. A film like
The House That Jack Built has the killer freely philosophize to us, and
Silence of the Lambs dryly offers bursts of psychoanalysis. But imagine how f*cked up it would be to walk in the mental landscape and dreams of a serial killer. If you want a visual odyssey that could mop the floor with
Inside Out, then prepare to enter
The Cell.
It'd be easy to peg this as another
Matrix wannabe, seeing as
The Cell dropped just a year afterward. The script had developed slowly throughout the 90s though, citing
Dreamscape and
Nightmare on Elm Street 3 as the bigger influences, and it shows.
The Cell is not interested in being a mindf*ck, but it excels as a surrealist nightmare. What pushes it over the top for me is definitely the artistic flourishes that Tarsem Singh brought to the table, treating the project as his own personal canvas to paint extravagant images of golden desertscapes, lush gardens, grungy chambers, and grandiose thrones. This was his first feature film after a career with music videos, and sometimes the music-video editing comes into play, giving the film some eye-popping flourishes in several scenes. Style is king with this film, and it alone is enough to win all my adoration, and I often wish that films could go back to embracing style as relentlessly as they did around this era.
They just don't make them like they used to, right? NO! Nobody
ever made them like this! Singh was either a certified genius or an authentic wacko. Artistic influence definitely seeps into numerous scenes, from HR Giger to Damien Hirst to the Quay Brothers, and some might even point to some NIN or Madonna music videos. There is one scene that very closely recreates the painting
The Dawn by Odd Nerdrum. Personally, I can't help but to see some Dali in the desertscapes and maybe Bosch in various other scenes.
The film's visual extravagance holds up magnificently over the years thanks to its robust production design (so many detailed sets, exotic props, wonderful costumes), and a judicious use of CGI. What impresses me more on rewatches is how smooth and inventive the camera movements and angles often times are.
While the superficial aspects are top-tier, I wouldn't fault anybody for finding the substance a little lacking. Characters are not really a huge standout, except maybe for the killer. I never thought much of J-Lo as an actress, and she spends most of this movie acting timid and soft-spoken (until the script demands she becomes a badass--I kinda liked her when she became briefly evil, that smile she had for those scenes was unsettling). Vince Vaughn also stars (didn't anybody learn their lessons from the
Psycho remake?). I'm not sure if it's intended, but I kept thinking he was putting on a lame impression of William Petersen the whole time. Fortunately, Vincent D'Onofrio stands out as the single best performance, and might as well be the film's centerpiece, seeing as it's mostly his mind we're in. The dude plays this role inside and out as a total creep, somehow balancing layers of childish glee and regal authority, and it might be my favorite performance from him.
The story is as thrilling as they come, but it might come across as a little hackneyed because it treats the subject of serial killers with a certain surface-level scrutiny that never really feels fresh or deep. Carl's character is molded by a history of abuse and sexual dysfunction--predictable beats that have been covered before in other movies. Even the motif of dolls feels like a cliche now. At times, it feels like the film is cribbing
Silence of the Lambs a lot, but not always for the best effect. All that being said, I was enamored by the ways the film weaves certain clues between the real world and the "fantasy." The Carver symbol, the disemboweling contraption, and even the damn dolls serve a visual purpose this way and can make the viewer feel smart for making the connections with Carl's psyche. There is also a big focus on a traumatic event: Carl's baptism, in which he almost drowned (didn't I see this in a
Bioshock game recently?).
For all the criticisms levied against the film, I would argue that a good story can be found in Catherine's journey in and out of a killer's mind, by nature of the finale. The most dimensional thing the film does is suggest that even a serial killer can have an inner child. But at a certain point, especially for an adult, a person can become so far gone that they can't be redeemed. Catherine spends most of this movie being so goodie-good, always trying to reach the inner child, but it takes the trauma of facing a dark soul to understand that not everyone can be saved.
[Show spoiler]Sometimes, a righteous kill has to be made. Interestingly, this is achieved with Carl being drowned (as a child nonetheless, to parallel his baptism) at the same time his victim is being un-drowned.
The parallels always make me feel smart for noticing them.
One can't help but to notice the bizarre, noisy music. Gol darn it, Howard Shore, calm down with those Middle-Eastern strings and horns, will ya? You think this is Mordor or something? I have to admit that it lends the film an eerie soundscape, but it is a little crazy in most scenes. The first end credits track is really smooth though. Funnily enough, Shore won the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for this music, so that's kinda badass.
Even after all these years, there isn't a film nearly as lush and unique as this (although
The Fall is probably Singh's best work). Its visual extravagance always catches my eye and remains captivating, but the film is not afraid to delve into some dark, twisted territory (even if those dark places seem inauthentic). My admiration always goes up each time I watch this beautiful bloody nightmare.
The director's cut on the new Arrow disc has only a few small changes, which makes the film a couple of minutes shorter somehow. Most of the differences are barely noticeable, but the biggest change is the scene where Carl is suspended over his victim. And he...uhhh...yeah, what he does is pretty messed up. Thanks, I hate it.
The Abyss Stares Back
September
09/05:
The Cell 
Violet: the colour out of 4K
*: the star Wormwood, the harbinger of new titles I had never seen before
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fine body horror/ folk horror until the end, they decided to 
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